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A: I know this is weird to because I just shot you but it feels like we are back in sync now.

B: Yes, I mean as in sync as I have ever been with someone who just shot me.

That marked phrase seemed interesting to me. Until then I knew we could only put an adjective or an adverb between "as...as".

Is that sentence below okay? I just made it up.

A: I am in big trouble. (A lied to his parents and he is afraid that they will find the truth.)

B: No, your are just as in trouble as someone who has lied to his parents.

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Presumably your point is that in both cases, logic tells you that a person is either in one state (eg 'in sync') or not. That ought to mean that the person's state cannot be compared in that respect with another person. That other person cannot be more or less 'in sync'; they are either 'in sync' or not.

Your logic is impeccable. In formal writing you should avoid such illogicalities.

Such constructions are frequently heard, however, in informal language. One hears people claiming they 'gave 110 per cent'. Or complaining about a garment: 'that is so not a skirt'.

The illogicality is a way of emphasising the point the speaker wishes to make.

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  • Is using such "as...as" forms common? Putting a prepositional phrase between them is something new to me.
    – Talha Özden
    Jul 12, 2019 at 21:44
  • It depends what you mean by 'common'. Some of my friends occasionally say such things. I cannot speak for other groups, but such a usage does not strike me as odd - as distinct from illogical.
    – JeremyC
    Jul 12, 2019 at 21:50
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Such constructions are perfectly acceptable, and not limited to highly informal speech. Nor need they be internally illogical.

  • This is as serious a problem as I have ever had.
  • This is as complex a system as I have ever designed.

Presumably I have had problems of various sizes, and designed systems of various complexities (in fact, i have). So the comparison in these 'as X as' phrases is a real one, not a purely rhetorical one. For the matter of that, the example in the question using 'as in sync as" seems to me to imply that people could be more or less in sync, not just in or out of sync.

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